Orion closes on €1.3bn

European firm closes Orion European Real Estate Fund IV on €1.3 billion of capital commitments.

Orion Capital Managers, the European private equity real estate firm, has closed its latest opportunity fund, Orion European Real Estate Fund IV, on the maximum of €1.3 billion just over 18 months after launching it.

The company led by Aref Lahham, Van Stults and Bruce Bossom, managed to attract new investors as well as existing investors for the follow up to fund III, said Orion, as it explained how it was seeing a “range of opportunities” and projects for the new fund.

Orion’s fund III is now fully invested with more than €1.1 billion of equity put to work in transactions including office and residential developments in central London. The firm also recently bought from British Land the 50 percent of Spanish shopping and leisure center, Puerto Venecia, in Zaragoza, Spain that Orion Fund III did not already own.Orion Capital Managers hit the fundraising in March 2012 for Orion European Real Estate Fund IV, with a target to raise as much as €1.3 billion in equity commitments, as PERE revealed at the time. The predecessor vehicle attracted €1.28 billion in 2009.

Like the managers of many other European opportunistic funds launched in 2008 and 2009, Orion came towards the end of the investment period for Fund III in the first quarter of 2013 predisposing the firm towards embarking on the fundraising trail for Fund IV.

Orion is not thought to have used a placement agent in its latest fundraising enterprise as it prefers to use its in-house investor relations and capital raising capabilities, although it did hire Credit Suisse Real Estate Private Fund Group for a ‘top-up’ assignment towards the latter stages of Fund III.

The company operates offices in London, Madrid, Paris and Milan with investment professionals on the ground locating and executing deals.